The Girl of My Dreams

Heh, heh, you get it, this session is about a girl in my dreams but I use the phrase "the girl of my dreams," oh the hilarity. But beyond that, I am bringing back to my mind an incident from a while back because A. it was interesting from a psychological standpoint because it was as close as I have ever come to outright delusional insanity, and B. because I represented it in several different ways. One of them is a session I did a long time ago on my mySpace webpost, but I shifted it over here and you can read it: The Season of the Witch

But due to an assignment for a writing class, I also engaged the matter in a different light.

That's what I'm bringing you today. If this examination of the incident seems light, and makes the incident seem harmless, I invite you to go to the previous post which examined it somewhat more heavily.


For a long time I believed that if a professor took attendance then he or she must believe in the three absence limit rule that was the official Rutgers policy. Experience has since proved me wrong, but as late as last September I believed this was true, however, despite this belief I still had a nasty habit of being late arriving to nearly every class but most especially to my classes on the maze-like Douglass campus. This was largely my own fault since I waited till the exact last moment to leave my room, and so after arriving late for the first few classes of my Douglass-based History of South Asia class I determined that it would be smarter not to wait at the bus stop near my dorm but rather to run to the more frequented bus stop next to the Rutgers Student Center. I think this decision did help me to be on time more often, but whether the more distant bus stop did or did not get me to class quicker, it did give me an extra ten minutes worth of scenery for which I am grateful.

That is not to say the scenery was anything special. It was simply the street in front of my dorm, the parking lot beyond that, the computer lab, Brower Commons, and the Rutgers Student Center. Yet all those places had people and people provide interesting scenery. One particular example from October is especially prominent among my memories. I was passing the computer lab and I saw a strikingly white pigeon. Most pigeons are somewhat white, somewhat gray but this was a bold white. It was also a rather large for its kind. It was also moving towards winter and any bird was rather unusual. But it drew my eyes to the bench in front of the computer lab where I saw a highly pretty girl. It was only a glance but I could see she had a slight frame, vibrant red hair cut moderately, a perfectly oval face with a petite nose, and a lovely subtle smile. I also found it amazing how close the pigeon was to her. I always loved birds and while I would occasionally chase them to see them fly off, often I would attempt just to get close, imagining perhaps I could pet them on their heads. But I was never quite able to get close them, I would try to be quiet but they would always fly away. Yet she was only a couple inches away from the pigeon and it seemed perfectly comfortable, I had to imagine that she had some special charm with animals. I paused for a moment, but then I ran off to catch the bus. I had to get to class and at the time I believed if I was marked absent just one or two more times the professor would start detracting from my grade. Looking back upon it, I regret not stopping and talking to her, but that regret is not why the memory remains with me.

I remember this instance so well because it reminded me of a dream I had a few nights before. The dream was an adventure where I met a witch who had some power over animals as well as other magic abilities. I can't really remember exactly how the witch looked, but for some reason, that girl at that moment seemed to capture perfectly her look. And for a second, I believed that the dream had entered reality, that it was not actually a dream but simply a prediction of things to come. This actually filled me with anxiety and sorrow since the dream itself ended badly but also with excitement. I always wanted to believe in magic, in dreams crossing over to reality, and for a moment I did. And because of that, suddenly my life had a new importance, I had to deal with the strange and powerful magical forces which in my dream had caused so much tragedy. I had a mission, but it lasted only as long as I believed that the dream had become real, and I believed that only for a second. Then the moment ended and I realized she was just a girl, although a pretty one, and I was getting late for class. So I sprinted for the bus and let the dream fade into the back of my mind.

I wonder what it would take for me to sincerely believe that a dream had become real and magic had entered into my life. I have seen things happen that have been predicted by my dreams a couple nights ago, but none of those things have been magical or required stretching the imagination. The dream this girl reminded me of was full of magic, of adventure, of strangeness and to believe in it would require a complete rewriting of how I view the world. On the other hand, even if I don't believe in magic, I have always believed in the possibility of magic. We live in a world where things surprise us daily, and new advances of science stretch the possible, so why not magic? But I suppose if it was that simple, if magic were simply another surprise, then it wouldn't have such allure. I suppose the charm of magic, and why I felt such excitement from the possibility that the dream had become real is the idea of suddenly becoming powerful and important. Magic offers a new route to becoming important, because it is a new source of power, something unseen in the world before. Just knowing about it gives you an edge over the rest of the world. And if my dream became real the significance of the magic would be even greater, the magic would represent the duty I had to correct the wrong which my dream had predicted, it would have given me a sense of higher purpose. But perhaps the attractive thing about magic is that it is just something we don't encounter, something completely new to our experiences. We have possibilities in our lives, but all our possibilities are confined in the systems that form society and bound by the rules of the world we live in. It doesn't mean our lives can't be unpredictable but there are limits on those possibilities. But if magic were possible, suddenly we could realize that those limits are illusionary, that there are no limits to our opportunities. The ordinary world would be shattered and become extraordinary. I think it's possible for magic to suddenly emerge like that, but I would need more proof than a girl who reminded me of a dream, and that's why I didn't stop, instead I ran to catch my bus.